In a recent poll on the homeone.com.au web site, recent home owners were asked:

"When building from a display type home - how much more was your final contract price compared to the base price of the home."

The results of the poll are indicated below:

Some of the comments on the web site were:

Our house ended up at 44% above and with all the gardens, curtains, landscaping etc it will be 55% above the base price of the house.

As things stand now we are between 30-40% however I am sure we will be well up over the 50% by the time all the extras are finished

Works out to 37%... That's before landscaping, curtains, fencing etc (& anything else we missed & don't find out until we move in)

Today I had quotation presentation with , and final quote is $444K where as base price was $230K, still it doesn't include drive, garden, landscaping, curtains and upgrades.

This is by no means a comprehensive study, and the actual cost vs original base price will vary considerably from builder to builder. However, it is usually the case that prices received from volume builders exclude a number of costs that would normally be included in the budget for an architect designed house.

As can be seen from the graph above, these costs can be significant and should be taken into account in any initial budgets and design selections.

In Article # 10 we will summarise the previous 9 articles. We will also review the original question of ‘Why do architect designed houses cost so much?' and consider the perhaps more appropriate question of :